UNCHARTED WATERS

The Journey of Mother Tongue®

*Primordial still from film - Torsha Banjeree*

Enter the spiral.

At the heart of the exhibition Uncharted Waters. The Journey of Mother Tongue is Primordial (2026), a newly commissioned dance film by choreographer Annalouise Paul. Rather than unfolding on a conventional screen, the work wraps around a spiral-shaped architectural wall, inviting visitors to move through the installation and experience the choreography with their whole bodies.

Across cultures, the spiral is one of the oldest and most enduring geometries. Found in shells, rivers, plants and galaxies, it expresses cycles of growth, transformation and return. Paul extends this rich symbolic lineage by transforming the spiral into an immersive environment where movement, sound and architecture become inseparable.

Structurally, the installation draws on the Fibonacci spiral, a geometric form whose proportional relationships appear throughout nature and have long informed mathematics, rhythm and artistic practice. As the spiral unfolds, it reveals the work gradually, encouraging shifting perspectives and resisting any single, fixed point of view.

Primordial forms part of Mother Tongue®, Paul's interdisciplinary project developed over more than fifteen years through collaboration with dancers, musicians, designers, technologists and cultural practitioners. Exploring four principles (rhythm, movement, geometry and technology) and unfolding over four acts (Present, Ancient Past, Deep Time and Future) Mother Tongue® considers how knowledge is carried through bodies across generations, and how movement might function as a universal language beyond words.

Primordial echoes the four acts of Mother Tongue® through the recurring geometries of the grid, the triangle and the spiral itself. Each reflects a different way of understanding our relationship to one another and the world: the grid evokes systems of order and control; the triangle recalls inherited structures of governance; and the spiral finally invites us to relinquish control and attune ourselves to the cycles of nature that lead to reciprocity. Through this journey, Primordial reflects on the possibility that renewal, coexistence and peace are not simply futures to imagine, but ways of being that lie beneath the systems we create, and to which we can return.

The dance language in the film moves between contemporary-flamenco (Paul’s own bilingual mother tongue practice) and an exploration of primordial movement. Filmed across urban, desert and bushland environments, the choreography responds to each territory, asking the body to yield and adapt. Beginning with rhythm, sound and gesture, simple movements build into complexity, reflecting Paul’s interest in how movement can carry knowledge and communicate beyond words. In this sense, Primordial asks us to consider the body itself as a mother tongue: a language of memory, connection and transmission.

Curation text: Miriam La Rosa 2026.